I have secured tickets secured to U2‘s second Montreal show on the Elevation Tour.
You’re tired of Bono’s rock star preaching you say? What’s that? I can’t hear you. I’m too busy throwing my panties on the stage and weeping like a school-girl when they play songs from Joshua Tree.*
don’t you miss ralph nader?
I went to Pat & Willy’s, a local Mexican restaurant to celebrate a birthday (don’t even get me started on the bizarre market for faux-Mexican/Texan motif dining on Prince Edward Island – it boggles my mind).
They have a promotion where you get a free meal on your birthday. The idea, no doubt, is that you’ll bring your friends and they’ll bring their wallets. Fine idea.
They used to include a free piece of cake for dessert. This was a nice little treat. Tonight, one of the guys at my table jokes that you get a free Joe Louis for dessert. We all had a good laugh. Then, at the end of the meal, the waitress came with a plate with one lonely Joe Louis with some whipped cream, chocolate sauce, and a sparkler. When I say Joe Louis, I am talking about the cheap chocolate cake things you buy at the 7-11 (a close relative of the Wagon Wheel, often found in Junior High School brown-bag lunches)
.
Let me be absolutely clear. It was not like a Joe Louis. It was a Joe Louis.
The gem of the East Coast Music Awards was right under our collective nose (if there can be such a thing) all along.
The Charlottetown band, Eyes for Telescopes is comprised of former members of east-coast super-group strawberry.
They have recently released their first CD called Please Survive and it will make you cry (particularly the track My Boy). You can buy it Back Alley Discs.
More to come on aov about the band and the release.
I’ve been looking for an opportunity to mention that I used to work at a grocery store with the drummer and that old bands of ours played at the same shitholes on occasion, but it just hasn’t come up yet. I’ll let you know.
If you have either a lot of bandwidth or a lot of time, there is a nice amusing feature on cultural demographics called Psycho-Graphics at the CBC’s 120seconds.com (see my earlier comments about the site).
However, as is the evil nature of Flash websites, I can’t provide you a simple link to it! ARGH!* You’ll have to go to the front of the site and look for the feature called “Psycho-Graphics” yourself.
Jeffrey Zeldman, for those who don’t know, is the poster boy of independent content development on the web. His site, Zeldman.com, is fine example of an intelligent person writing interesting things. It’s not a navel-gazing blog site (although there are some great ones out there).
Read this great account of a web awards gala where Zeldman’s site is recognized along with a load of dot-com companies (this was a few years back, dot-commies were like Jean Cabot, telling the king that the waters off Newfoundland have so much fish you can almost walk on the water).
The best part is a conversation Zeldman has with a woman:
“What is your company?” says the bolder of the two. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s a personal site,“ I say.
She brightens. “Oh, you mean like dating services?”
“No, I mean there’s no company, it’s just me. It’s entertainment for the Web.”
“Ah. Who supplies your entertainment content?”
“I do. I supply the entertainment content.”
She says, “What is your revenue model?”
I say, “I don’t have one.”
Where are they now? Zeldman is about to publish his book and his website is still a staple of independent content development.
Rehashing a few old posts, I will remind you of some great things.
First of all, go visit explodingdog.com. If you haven’t been there before, I assure you that it has nothing to do with exploding dogs. Rather it is a site of fantastic illustrations that will make you laugh and cry (the happy kind). If you have been there before, go again.
Then, if you haven’t already, sign up for our mailing list. We’ll only send you brilliant emails.
Finally, email us. Tell us how much you love/hate us (be specific). Suggestions, submissions, compliments, and insults are welcome: thegeniuses@actsofvolition.com
It has to be at least a dollar actually. But is that too much to ask for our sharp humour and cunning witticisms? No, it is not.
Amazon.com has set up a new system called the Amazon Honor System which is the electronic equivalent of throwing money in to our hat as we amuse you on the sidewalk of [lame cyber-analogy censored].
The system allows an independent website (like our humble aov) to put a cute little (actually quite large) graphic on their page that when clicked will allow viewers to pay the site authors for their brilliance. Transactions are a minimum of $1 and maximum of $50. Amazon takes a 15% cut in exchange for handling the transaction.
Stay calm though! Keep your plastic in your pockets! You can’t give us money yet. You need a U.S. Checkings Account for Amazon to pay you (and U.S. bank accounts are hard to come by on Prince Edward Island).
Those wacky folks at Amazon (or at least the wacky remaining 85%) are always cooking up cool new schemes. The Amazon Purchase Circles are another cool one (especially for you privacy buffs). You can view popular products by employer (Microsoft seems to be quite self-interested). The Amazonians must be trying to keep busy to avoid killing Jeff Bezos for his incredibly annoying laugh.
If it is possible for a website to be “ toe-tappin’ ”, then I think I may have found such a site. Crank up your speakers and check out this gem.
Saw waydowntown at City Cinema* last night. Excellent movie. Smart, stylish, and very funny (kind of like matt).
The movie is about a group of friends who make a bet to see who can live in the connected office building apartment complex in which they work and live without going outside for one month. Having once spent three days in Halifax at a conference without breathing fresh air (the two main hotels, the conference center, and of course, the casino are all connected), I was having retroactive claustrophobia.